Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the WaffenSs,Used

Originally written while the author was a prisoner of the US Army in 194546, Black Edelweiss is a boon to serious historians and WWII buffs alike. In a day in which most memoirs are written at half a centurys distance, the former will be gratified by the authors precise recall facilitated by the chronologically shortrange (a matter of one to seven years) at which the events were captured in writing. Both will appreciate and enjoy the abundantly detailed, exceptionally accurate combat episodes.Even more than the strictly military narrative, however, the author has crafted a searingly candid view into his own mind and soul. As such, Black Edelweiss is much more than a 'ripping yarn' or a lowlevel military history. Black Edelweiss joins not only the growing body of German military memoirs, but the more select, more narrowlyfocused group of personal memoirs by other WaffenSS enlisted men. Beyond the microcosmic view of combat these books relateto the extent that they are honest and candidsuch books are important for what they can reveal about their authors motivations and reflections on those impulses and their consequences. To date, these works differ significantly.As it joins the ranks of the books in this genre, Black Edelweiss makes a unique and very important contribution. It is a true, personal account of the authors war years, first at school and then with the WaffenSS, which he joined early in 1943 at the age of seventeen. For a year and a half, the author fought as a machine gunner in SSMountain Infantry Regiment 11 'Reinhard Heydrich,' mainly in the arctic and subarctic reaches of Soviet Karelia and Finland, and later at the Western frontier of the Third Reich. The characters in the story are real, and the conversations and actions are recounted to the best of his ability from the short distance at which he wrote the manuscript in 194546.Apart from the piercing insights into the question of why the German soldier fought as he did, what makes this book truly unique is the authors anguished, yet resolute examination of the dialectic between the honorable and valorous comportment of his comrades and the fundamentally reprehensible conduct of about 35,000 men behind the front lines who nevertheless wore the same uniform.During his captivity, the author was assigned for a time as a clerk to a US Army Judge Advocate Generals Corps officer, and in the performance of his administrative duties, the author had access to the mounting reams of documentation of the Holocaust. His growing recognition of the involvement of WaffenSS personnel in the monstrous crimes of that process caused him to dig deeply into his soul, to examine his most intimate and private motivations and thoughts, and to reevaluate the most basic assumptions of his life to that point. The author captured this process and the result in the notes which became this book.Honestly, forthrightly, and courageously told, Black Edelweiss is a precious gift to historians and other students of World War II. It not only provides a glimpse into the attributes that made the German armed forces a formidable and tenacious foe, but squarely confronts the most painful issue facing German World War II veterans in general, and WaffenSS veterans in particular.Supported by 22 photos, 8 maps, and notes.